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7 Dec 2015 Believer discretion – The tragic story of Debunked Psychic James Hyrdrick, Miklos Jakos, the Amazing Randi and James Van Praagh

This morning I was revisiting the subject of telekinesis and psychic powers. Since my previous blog about my trying this out for myself, I have had much success pushing paper…not like when I was a personnel specialist in the Air Force (basically a secretary who moved paper for a living). I was lead to visit the skeptic’s side of the house. The first video I’ve linked showing skeptic Amazing Randi testing then renowned Psychic James Hydrick on the television show hosted by Bob Barker called That’s My Line. Watching this lead me to the others I’ve linked.

The story of James is extremely tragic. After he was exposed as a fraud and interviewed, he revealed his disturbing childhood and how this affected the course of his life. This story is a great one to speak to the perpetrators of violence in our society today. The elusive WHY I keep talking about us needing to get to so we can stem more mass shootings and violence in our world. James said he “wanted to be known” because in the course of his young life he was treated like a dog, literally. For a time he was called “Spot” and tied up and fed in the yard instead of the house!

An informative article from The Tribune in 2013 if you want to learn more about him:

The case for psychic powers is pretty shaky! My own personal experiences with having readings done by people claiming to have psychic powers a.k.a mediums has been mixed. Out of all of the readings I have had may be one where the reader used Runes was even remotely accurate. I have to ask myself if he was accurate or if I wanted him to be! Self -fufilling prophecy sort of thing.

As a self -proclaimed Empath, a person with a high degree of sensitivity to emotional and physical energy from other people, places and things I often question my own abilities simply because I know myself and how “my stuff” can get mixed up with interacting with other people’s stuff. Sometimes it’s easier to believe I’m picking up somebody else’s “stuff” than facing my own. I’ve never had a dream, written or drawn something as precognitive without having to get “validation” afterwards. More things haven’t been validated than have been. More times than not when I’m doing energy work and or “empath work” it is like therapy more than anything else. I believe once emotional/spiritual pain is “relieved” a space is made for physical healing and personal growth. I believe in the power of suggestion and people are healed or “read” if they want to be healed or read. In the biblical story of Jesus, he said “your faith has healed you.” He knew about this power and I think used it in his work.

I believe we all have “abilities” beyond conscious acknowledgement. Some people are more conscious and in touch with these shared abilities. Some people abuse this awareness to take money from the less “awakened” and this is a discredit to those of who don’t.

Writing this isn’t meant to discredit anyone who is conscious and uses their gifts to help others. I just caution those who take advantage of these types of people, people who profit from sharing their gifts, to use discernment and go into the situation educated…aware of the “tricks of the trade” beforehand. I do not accept money for what I do. Then again, I have not chosen to share my gifts to support myself either! For some, using and sharing gifts like this are their “bread and butter.” Many gifted people I know and love in the Holistic healing community do support themselves this way. I want to believe they are honest and transparent with their clients unlike the mediums and psychics in these videos and so many other “charlatans” out in this world.

Viewer, “experiencer” beware. Leave your gullibility’s at the door.

Here is an article I found to outline some of the main techniques when getting a reading to be aware of and watch for:

Naming is a fundamental part of any psychic medium reading. The medium mentions a common name, in order to find willing subjects for readings.

Once a subject has been chosen, the medium attempts to validate the reading by supplying detail. Firstly, they guess the cause of death. Some mediums claim to be medical intuitives or empathetic; that is, able to feel the physical pain and symptoms of a living or deceased subject’s illness, enabling diagnosis, or identification of the cause of death.

This is followed by more validation in the form of a psychic reading of the deceased, and usually the subject too. Mediums give horoscope-like personality readings that use Barnum statements. These involve generalizations about character that can apply to many people. For example,

Then they list a number of objects and occurrences that could be meaningful to most people: Rebecca Rosen mentioned a ring with a reset stone, a necklace with a broken clasp, a broken zipper, a rainbow, a broken phone, and carrying spare change. These are non-specific items that give the illusion of specificity.

Mediums often claim the spirits communicate via sights, sounds, and even smells. This frames the spirit world in a way the living can understand, as an extension of the natural world. John Edward claims most of his messages are visual; the spirits point to parts of their bodies to reveal their cause of death, or show him something to communicate to the subject.

These strategies tailor the reading to fit the subject, meanwhile making the subject do the work by making the connections. This is a process known as subjective validation, when the subject finds personal meaning in the reading.

I saw Sylvia perform live in Salt Lake City. She gives a lecture to her audience and then does some select individual readings, choosing her subjects via a raffle ticket system.

It is a game of hits and misses, although the “hits” aren’t indicative of accuracy, they are merely perceived as correct. It is common for mediums to deny the misses by turning them into hits, even if they have to blame the subject

Or the medium blames the dead for his or her mistakes. During James van Praagh’s appearance on Larry King Live he was asked to explain why he’d said a person had been deceased for ten years when they had died only a year before.

What happens is more than likely, because you’re dealing with frequencies of energy the spirit might not know how to communicate,” Van Praagh answered. “There’s a skill to it. They might send thought to my mind very quickly; I might not be fast enough to pick up the exact translation of what they’re saying. So that’s how that works. I’ll hear like Mary and it’ll be Marie or Nikki and it’ll be something else.6

After nailing down a name, guessing a cause of death and validating the reading for the subject, the medium closes the reading. Most finish with a simple yet personal stock message, such as, “He loves you”.

Today James Randi still offers a $1 million prize to anyone who can prove they engage in paranormal activity, the prize used to be $10,000. Over the years James Randi has seen hundreds and hundreds of entrants, and for some astonishing reason absolutely none of the people can perform their paranormal acts under controlled conditions that take cheating out of the equation, hmmmm I wonder why. Time and time again the frauds(I mean psychics) have to come up with lame excuses as to why their con (I mean powers) won’t work in a test. Here you see James Hydrick perform his “miracle” and 10 minutes later fail at the same miracle when cheating is taken out of the equation.

James Van Praagh and other practitioners of so-called “channeling”R­12;communicating with deceased people—have consistently avoided James Randi’s Million Dollar Challenge test to prove their psychic abilities. In this video, Miklos Jako, a knowledgeable layman, tests Van Praagh’s ability simply by having a session with him and analyzing what went on. The results, though not strictly scientific, are pretty conclusive, as well as entertaining. Miklos Jako is a retired teacher, who has investigated religion and related topics all his life. He is the author of Confronting Believers (Infinity Publishing). He graduated from Phillips Academy, Andover, MA, and Colby College, ME.

James Randi – Secrets of the Psychics Documentary (Full)

Published on Nov 17, 2012

See 2 hours of Randi here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpeN3… James “The Amazing” Randi is the perfect mix of Science and Magic, a true conjurer of visual machinations that can fool our senses while, at the same time, explaining to us how our senses are fooled. In my opinion this is the best example of a “human mind debugger”, he gets right into the machinations of analog tricks and sees how our brains mistakenly manifests them as a possible reality. Randi also teaches us that illusion and trickery may be comforting to the human mind, but truth is far much more wonderful as it shows us the machinations from the chaos, the sense as well as the awe in both the tricks and the real world. For several decades, Randi has gone on to expose hundreds of psychics and teach millions across the globe about how they could be fooled into believing in a system which could potentially make them vulnerable to trickery and perhaps psychical harm. Randi is not afraid to go against popular opinion, as shown in his battle against so-called psychic Uri Geller in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. Randi has also gone against the bizarre practice of faith “healing” and contacting the deceased, and has exposed the cruel, callous and cynical nature of the people who claim to be performing “God’s will”, such as Peter Popoff. Randi has also warned us time and time again about the fraudulent practice that is homeopathic medicine and how it is essentially water solution, dished out as hocus-pocus medicine. James Randi is the founder of The James Randi Educational Foundation, an organisation that attempts to bring reason to world by luring potential psychics into a trap, baited by a million dollar prize to prove their psychic “powers”. “powers” here is a kind of vague term,as Randi knows, so the tests are usually on the so-called psychic’s terms. No self-acclaimed psychic has ever won the prize. Whether or not some form of psychic power exists is still an open question, however many psychics often do not properly gauge their so-called skills and instead brag about them, hence scepticism about such claims should not be so strange to their ears. Unfortunately the vast amount of psychic powers they have seem to remove all self-esteem as many psychics are often uneasy about Randi’s reasonable request and attractive million dollar reward.

James Randi Debates 2 Mediums and Psychiatrist Brian Weiss

Uploaded on Jul 3, 2010

Copyright @ CNBC. All Rights Reserved. On CNBC, James Randi takes on two Mediums – James Van Prague and Jonathan Edward, and Psychiatrist Brian Weiss, Author of “Many Lives , Many Masters”.

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The best symbol to identify me is like the tattoo I have of a chameleon. The best way to understand my spirituality is to take in the beauty of any tree. Everything I need to know about birth, life, death and immortality can be summed up in the life of a tree! I am a creator. If I can figure out a way to make something I see with my own hands I do it. I love to do anything creative - wire bending, writing, drawing, singing, crocheting blankets, photography. I am a very spiritual person...not religious. Mother Nature and all of her creation are my church and spending time outside with her is my greatest therapy. Walking, meditating, praying and doing Tai Chi/interpretive dance in nature is how I pray. My life is an expression of life with the God of my understanding. My God is the energy that made all that is and continues to sustain it.
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